On Cardinal Ruini's lecture about Pope Benedict's vision...

Dear God,

I have read with great interest Cardinal Ruini's lecture to the priests of Rome this vision of Papa Ratzi's Christianity and why it has lost traction in our modern world.

For all the extremely worthwhile points made in it — and much of what both the Cardinal and Your Vicar argue does have great merit — I honestly think their arguments overlook the major reason why Christainity has lost traction with the vast majority of those whom it is mean to be serving can be found in another place. One that is much, much closer to home...

The vast majority of people are sick, sick to death of the fundamentalism that has crept into Catholicism. Our two prelates go close to identifying the problem when they write...

"[Humankind] becomes divided within [it]self and almost disintegrated, provoking pathology in both religion – which, detached from rationality, easily degenerates into superstition, fanaticism, and fundamentalism – and science, which easily turns against man when it is detached from ethics, and in concrete terms from the recognition of the human person as a being that can never be reduced to an instrument."

From my perspective in the constantly overlooked 50% of your flock I think your Vicars overlook the fact that Catholicism itself has degenerated into a form of fundamentalism. All your priests and bishops around the world are constantly pandering to fundamentalism. Look at all the websites that are broadcasting a so-called "Catholic" message, and constantly proclaiming their "undying loyalty to the magisterium"? Examine what they are really saying. Analyse it and you will find it is a new form of fundamentalism. That is what "the people" are walking away from.

One can see "the problem" in microcosm on the CathNews Discussion Board, which was the precursor to this place. The people in authority could not give a damn what is broadcast there. They stand back in their self-satisfied stupor thinking they are doing the Church some great favour by "opening up a new channels of communication" but they literally could not give a damn what is broadcast through that channel or by whom. From the beginning of one year to the next they would largely be totally ignorant in fact of what is being broadcast through these channels. Rather than counteract with reason and rational argument what is broadcast there though how do your "vicars" in this part of the world try and deal with it: by the "Big Brother" tactics of unprincipled, arbitary censorship. That's how! In micrcosm what you see going on there reflects the gutlessness that today constitutes the behaviours of bishops and priests across the Western world to the point where well-balanced individuals no longer even bother to front up to Church on Sunday or present themselves at the seminary doors for ordination.

God, your bishops and priests have largely been silenced in the world today. And who "silenced" them? It has not been the scientists or "scientism". It has been the leaders who have been too gutless to stand up against the fundamentalists who today have taken over places like the CathNews discussion board. Like those who sponsor and claim management of the CathNews Discussion Board though — ultimately the Catholic Bishops of Australia — they are totally afraid to enter into any discussion, rational or otherwise, with the likes of a Fr John George, or this latest fraud posing as a priest, the paternalistic, condescending "1950s Neanderthal Man", Fr Charles Broadside. Do the bishops of Australia honestly believe the kind of communication behaviours that are encouraged on the CathNews discussion board are going to re-evangelise the Church in this country? Do they know, or care, what is being perpetrated in that place in their name — and your name, God?

Click the image above or HERE to read the full text of Cardinal Ruini's lecture to the Bishops of Rome on the Theology of Pope Benedict and Sandro Magister's commentary on it.

And why are your bishops and priests too gutless to take these people on today? Could I suggest because of the lack of encouragement from the very top in Rome. Rome, in fact, has provided almost continual encouragement over the last nearly 200 years to Catholic fundamentalism that does actually fly in the face of all the very worthy things that Cardinal Ruini and Papa Ratzi have explored in this interesting lecture that has been brought to us in recent days courtesy of Sandro Magister. Rome herself continually censors those priests, theologians and thinkers who have endeavoured to open up dialogue with the world of precisely the sort of vision Benedict is trying to open up as explained by Cardinal Ruini.

The principal challenge the Church faces today is not from science, or scienticism. It is from the fundamentalists in her own ranks who refuse to dialogue and instead endeavour to belt the entire world with their out-of-context biblical literalism, their own psychological insecurity dressed up as toughness, bravado, absolutism, false-courage and the "handshakes of 1950s men". And it is from the gutlessness of an institutional leadership who refuse absolutely to let up on the appeasement of these poor, spiritually deluded individuals and send them packing with their websites and fundamentalism that are driving literally hundreds of millions out of the Church across the length and breadth of the Western world and in the heartland of Christianity, Europe.

It is in the nature of paradox, God — and I'm sure you understand this as you taught it to us — that our leaders are not going to counter the influence of these people by censoring them, as they have endeavoured to run the Church by censorship for centuries. We have to engage these people in discussion and tell them in pretty unequivocal terms when what they are saying is in fact NOT authentic Catholic thinking. But the lay people cannot do that alone. They need the support of their bishops and spiritual leaders. If our leaders continue to remain silent in the face of this onslaught by the insecure we can continue to look forward to the collapse of the Church until all that will be left is a remnant of fundamentalist Catholics running around proclaiming how they are the only one's who know Absolute Truth and how the rest of the world are all sinners!

There IS Absolute Truth in Creation. It is NOT the Absolutes that are claimed by Catholic Fundamentalists though. If Cardinal Ruini and Pope Benedict are to begin reversing the great Apostacy that began in the 1920s, but had its origins within the Church up to a century before that, they have to start addressing the false absolutism within their own ranks and begin pointing to where the True Absolute really does subsist in Creation. It does not "subsist" in the minds of Catholic Fundamentalists — nor in the minds of the goody-two-shoes Christian social conformists forever trying to express their loyalty and obedience like stupid sheep who will not think for themselves but are driven solely by mob behaviours. It "subsists" in You alone.

We need shepherds who have the courage to lead us back to that one "eternal truth" that is worth knowing.

Your humble servant,

Sister Phoebe

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Sister Phoebe is Ruth's sister. She's been a professed nun since Eve was a little girl and she's forever writing letters to God — some of which we are able to bring you from time to time in he pages of Catholica.

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